A Whirlwind Through Three Cities and Raw Herring on the North Sea

About two weeks ago, my sister Diana and her friend Caroline came from Cambridge to visit me.  They had been in Berlin for a few days, and on their way back to England they stopped in Amsterdam.  I was so happy to get to be their tour guide, and they picked the ideal time to come to the Netherlands--at the peak of the tulip season.  They arrived in the evening, and I took them up to the top floor of the Amsterdam Public Library for a marvelous view of the city with its tall, narrow red brick houses, canals, and church steeples.  The buildings you can see bordering the water all lean forward slightly and have hooks attached near the roofs.  This is because the doors are two narrow to move furniture through, and so if you buy a new table or a big chair you have to put it through a window on the upper story, using a rope and pulley attached to the hook.  And by constructing the houses so that they lean forward, there is less chance that the furniture will bash into the walls as you pull it up.

They were staying in Amsterdam, and after checking into their hostel, we walked over to see Vondelpark, a green place with lakes, trees, birds, flowers, and delinquent teenagers smoking!  It was a little dark for taking pictures, but I was there the day before and took these.

A heron by the water.

A statue of Mr. Vondel himself, who the park is named after.

Orange tulips and a classic Amsterdam brick building.  Diana was amazed at how beautiful the city was.

The next morning we took the train from Amsterdam to Leiden, where I had a class to attend.  Diana and Caroline were pretty stunned when they caught their first glimpse of the flower fields between Haarlem and Leiden.  Everyone on the train was sitting silently or reading the newspaper while the three of us made a lot of noise exclaiming over the red, pink, yellow, purple, and orange patchwork of tulips and hyacinths.  Here I am with my wonderful sister by the windmill in Leiden.

There aren't so many tulips in the city of Leiden, but the trees and shrubs were blooming.  This is a fairly recent picture from the Botanical Gardens there.

Also in the Leiden Botanical Gardens.

Diana and Caroline explored the city while I went to class, and I met them just as they were finishing up lunch at the Oudt Leyden 't Pannekoekenhuysje--a great place for traditional Dutch pancakes on large blue and white Delftware pancake plates.  Diana had cherries with ice cream and whipped cream, and Caroline had tomatoes, cheese, and olives.  Dutch pancakes are like French cr êpes, only not so thin.

We jumped back on the train and headed for Den Haag, about a fifteen minute ride from Leiden.  It's pretty quick to get around in a small country like the Netherlands.

The "coat of arms" for Den Haag is a stork eating a worm.  Storks have been the symbol of this city for centuries.  Wild ones used to prowl around the fish markets, but now there aren't many left.  There are a few kept in an enclosure by the train station, and there are even some wild ones still.  While we were walking toward the Mauritshuis Museum, it suddenly struck Diana and Caroline that they had walked out of the pancake restaurant in Leiden without paying!  Somehow both of them had forgotten, and there were no waiters hovering to collect the bill.  We decided to stop there on the way back to Amsterdam, so they could resolve the problem.  "We're criminals," Diana said.  "What if the police are there waiting for us?!"

I think the Mauritshuis may be the finest museum in the Netherlands.  The collection is relatively small, but it isn't called the "jewel box" for nothing.  They have a number of very precious paintings, including Vermeers, Rembrandts, and my favorite--a Lamentation over the body of Christ by Rogier van der Weyden.  It's a beautiful museum, too.  It's in a kind of mansion overlooking a lake with a little island and swans.  You can't quite see the museum in this picture--its just to the left.

The Binnenhof borders the Mauritshuis Museum.  Den Haag is the capital of the Netherlands for all intents and purposes, and the historic government buildings make up the Binnenhof.

Queen Betarix, the Dutch monarch, and her family live in Den Haag also.  This is an ornamental well in a square within the Binnenhof.

And the three of us.

Then back on the train for a ten-minute ride to the beautiful city of Delft.  Some of you may remember that the last time I was in Delft it rained all day.  It was much nicer weather this time!  We got there just in time for Diana and  Caroline to go inside the towering Nieuwe Kerk and see the impressive mausoleum of William the Silent.  I went across the street to the Church of Maria van Jesse where for centuries the Catholic citizens of Delft  have venerated a wooden statue of the Virgin and Child, believed to work miracles.  Delft's most famous artist, Vermeer, married into a Catholic family and probably was a Catholic himself.  He lived in the neighborhood of this church.

Several shops in the market place sell the famous blue and white Delftware.  These are tulip vases--you put a tulip in each spout.  I thought the Delftware birdcage for sale was pretty nice, but I draw the line at Delftware dog food dishes!

The leaning tower of Delft's Oude Kerk reflected in a tree-lined canal.

Diana and me by the Oude Kerk.

The whirlwind day continued as we hopped back on the train and returned to Den Haag to catch a tram out to the seaside community of Scheveningen.  Like me, Diana and Caroline love to eat and like to try the special dishes of the cities they visit.  I had brought them a pack of stroopwafels the day before.  The package was gone by the next morning, and the subject of stroopwafels and where one might buy more had come up in the conversation several times already.  They had Dutch pancakes in Leiden, French Fries with mayonnaise in Den Haag, as well as another deep-fried Dutch treat with meat and spices.  "Oh," I said, "And there's also raw herring.  You hold it by the tail, tip back your head, and eat it.  You can buy them everywhere--unbelievable that some people will actually eat it."  There was a pause in the conversation.  "But I love raw fish," said Diana.  "Yum!  I want one, too," said  Caroline.  I was stunned.  I should have guessed with Diana, but how could there be two of them that would eat a raw herring?  I thought that the Gollum-type personality that favored fish "raw and wriggling" was in the minority of the population, yet here I was outnumbered by them!  There aren't even very many Dutch people that like those horrible raw herrings!  We decided that when we went to Scheveningen we would buy some, and they could eat it on the beach by the North Sea.  This is a picture of the beach resort at Scheveningen.

And here is the raw herring, still with a few scales.  Caroline got raw onions in hers.

A horrible sight to behold!  As they were posing for pictures, Diana said, "Yum--delicious drips of fish juice!"  That about made me loose my lunch.  Caroline took a bite and made a face.  "This is extremely fishy," she said, and she couldn't eat anymore.

But not Diana!  "Powerful fish taste," she said.  "Must have bread--get me some bread to cut this fish taste!"  I got her some bread from my backpack, and she made two raw herring "hot dogs" and ate both her fish and Caroline's! 

We walked along the North Sea as the sun set and Diana complained about herring bones caught in her teeth.  She also admitted that the smell on her hands from the fish was pretty nauseating.  Caroline gave her a very strong breath mint, which Diana said tasted worse than the herring, but I don't believe that for a minute!  We spent the rest of the evening laughing about the fish.  Diana didn't like it so much that she was ready to buy another anytime soon--at least not without tomato and mayonnaise on bread!  And I'm happy to say that when we stopped again at the pancake restaurant in Leiden on our way back, the police force was not waiting for us.